I agree, that people with old accounts do not necessarily write better, more insightful comments or post better stories than recent arrivals, but they have been

I agree, that people with old accounts do not necessarily write better, more insightful comments or post better stories than recent arrivals, but they have been around longer, and are probably more committed to the community. Case in point, the 3 character post that you mentioned was posted by davidw: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidw http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidw He's been a member for over a year, and his karma is over 2300.